


High Flying, Adored

by leslielol



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, The Force, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: The Mandalorian and the child flee the outpost and take in a view.Post-Chapter 3: The Sin
Relationships: The Mandalorian & The Child
Comments: 26
Kudos: 433





	High Flying, Adored

**Author's Note:**

> Shit, y'all, I love a western. 
> 
> P.S. you fuckin BET that title is from Evita.

They tear away from the outpost, Mandalorians flanking his ship until he's clear of errant blaster rays and foolish attempts to give chase. Even when they’re in the clear, the Mandalorian flies fully armed and ready for further attack. Bounty hunters have the guild's code, but there are unwritten rules to both abide by and fear. That IG-11 bounty droid acquired a passing glimpse of them when the Mandalorian put his blaster to its head.

Behind him, the child stirs.

Through a viewing feed looped against the side of his helmet and positioned against his back, the Mandalorian watches it wriggle out from a blanket--also stolen, and dark with Stormtrooper blood along a frayed corner. The child is seemingly pleased to be returned to his familiar surroundings, and leverages itself up to explore the cockpit. It walks uneasily to one side, then the other. It does not trace its way along the curved metal walls; its route is far more dynamic. 

This is disconcerting for all of a minute--this child could make moves the Mandalorian does not expect, and therefore cannot anticipate--until its attention quickly falls on that shiny standby, the knob of a control lever. To the fat little hand that reaches, the Mandalorian submits the item for inspection. The child sits and toys with its prize, and is so quiet, the Mandalorian can believe he's done as was agreed, and left the bounty with its new captors. 

He loses the bit of hardware and the knot in his stomach in one fell swoop, and feels bereft for it. 

The Mandalorian charts a few evasive maneuvers, a roundabout path to nowhere until he can fathom a true path, and they fly in blissful silence.

Space affords him time to think. Traveling as he is--well outside of the atmospheres of nearby planets, but not in so-dark-reaches that he can believe himself lost--he flits between worlds. His ship was made (and remade) for this; it’s nothing so sleek that he can pierce the galaxy and evade a tail with one thrust of his engines. That much is by design; he prefers to let those who’d try and bring him down find themselves dropping out of orbit and careening into unexpected terrain. He prefers to fly low.

If he's close to everything, there's no telling apart where he will and won't be. He is afforded the curious gift of effusion-by-proximity, of being an unknown known. 

He rides in on the presumption of his reputation, singles out those who are right to be afraid, or wrong to believe themselves untouchable, and strikes. He is efficient. He is methodical. And by these measures, there is little in the galaxies he's traversed or the lives he's interrupted that surprises him.

He's surprised _himself_ more than once lately.

He wants to chalk it up to his coming into so much Beskar steel, and returning to the Mandalore enclave, where knowledgeable minds speak of things that feel ancient, but are only lost by single years. He wants this because the math is simpler: he can attribute sideways and cancel out these strange happenings.

And it's halfway to the truth: he _doesn't_ know how to feel about coming into his full armour, of being offered a powerful signet, but knowing it bears no meaning and denying it. He _can't_ name the sense of obligation that pressed him to ask three times after the child's welfare, demanding answers as though he has a stake in what he's already won.

He wants to deny everything, it seems, until it is pressed firmly into his palm and someone assures him it's worth taking.

He wanted nothing of what he expected to be an old man--someone who ran the gamut between low-life, criminal, and warlord--until a child reached out with its hand, impossibly small and unnaturally powerful, willing and eager to greet him. 

And it _is_ a child, he decides, not because of its size or apparent inability towards speech, but because of its eyes. Wide, dark, and wondering, there’s nothing they settle on that the child does not find immediately interesting and new. It is a child because it does not yet comprehend that the worlds they might touch are full of dangerous creatures, first made so by their desperation, then refined through cruelty.

Or negligence.

Or a code.

The Mandalorian considers himself among those ilk--a part of his own tribe, yes, but life did not see fit to keep him locked underground, being righteous and observant in familiarly-masked company. He makes his way between worlds, cashing in on a risky game for which he’s shown a deft hand. 

He thinks of the firefight they only just escaped, and even then, narrowly and at the backs of others. He remembers the curious feeling of regret take hold as he shielded the child's unconscious body in the flatbed of an old speeder. He cared not for whatever loss of honor might follow his name after rescinding on a bounty--the pain was nearer than that. It resided _in_ him, and not the impressions others held tight against him. 

A guilty conscience is not the way of the Mandalorian. 

And a lucky turn isn't a thing he can rely on, if he's smart.

Those who held those beacons may have fallen, their bodies still warm in the streets, but others still take their seats at an outpost bar. And there, after a few too many, they’ll find themselves half as curious and twice as greedy so as to follow in pursuit. They’ll step over the dead and feel lighter for it, because they’ve skipped ahead in line to become that much more owed their prize.

His hands tighten over the controls.

A horizon--one of the consistencies of space travel is that there are thousands of them--bends ahead of him. The Mandalorian realigns his ship and continues on.

He thinks--he _worries_ \--he’ll need to find some Empire tech, or better yet, a voice from that bygone era, someone who could feasibly understand why this child is such a prize. He considers it like a job: he must endeavor to find whomsoever covets the creature most, and kill them. 

The alternative is only to keep running. 

He thinks about Kuiil, living peacefully in his valley. The Mandalorian wants nothing of the sort; he means to stand at the center of galaxies and recuperate the name, status, and rights of his people. Their territories were lost but can be reclaimed. Their numbers are few--and fewer still when Mandalorians believe survival is a thing worth dying in battle for--but as much can be said for thousands of species. For this child, even.

Worlds aren't ordered so as to take in the lost; only tribes will see to that, if a creature is fortunate enough to find one.

Of course, even mercy comes at a price. The Mandalorian remembers stating the truth of his existence, naming his catastrophic losses with singular finality, if never again. It was worth it to acknowledge the self, to be known, and to know what had been lost so that he could be remade.

It could be worth it, he thinks, to try. 

He automates the ship.

He lifts out of his seat and approaches the child, who, without its pod, is sitting upright in the seat at the Mandalorian's right. He is delightedly watching the stars whizz by. 

“Hey.”

There are no whites to the child's eyes; they're an endlessly glossy black, but somehow they draw focus, and the Mandalorian feels himself eclipse the view to become the total of the creature's world.

“What are you.”

The child blinks slowly. Its eyes shine no less delightedly over this encroachment: the Mandalorian, with armour as bright as any distant star. 

“Do you have a name?”

He sneers at himself for even asking, as if he’s wasted precious comprehension on so inane a subject.

(He waves a hand, but it’s of no matter; the child hasn’t deigned to answer.)

“Did something happen--” _to your people. To your planet._

The Mandalorian returns to his seat and retakes manual control of his ship. It’s somehow even more foolish to ask of a singular creature lost to a distant planet, alone and in apparent infancy, _did something happen?_

They’re only five years out from under the Empire, but evil and a hunger for power and gain at the expense of starving off planets did not begin and end with that particular cabal. The Mandalorian glances back at the child, takes in its wrinkled green skin. The soft-looking hair atop its head is as delicate as the fuzz on a Jogan fruit. The pinkish veins running through to the tips of its ears lead the appendages to resemble supple plantlife. This creature is a known quantity in apparent _infancy,_ a fact that portends a teller.

Some other being out in the world had perhaps cared for this child--to a point--and then given it away.

 _No,_ the Mandalorian thinks. That’s too generous on his part, to suggest he wasn’t the first to trade a life for favor or credits. It’s likelier still that someone loved and cared for this bright little one, and was struck down in defense of it being where it should, with its own kind.

Maybe the Empire had beset a cavalcade of droids on its homeland, too. Maybe it had the great misfortune of a resource-rich earth beneath its slightly webbed feet. Maybe its people had some skill that, if not harnessed, had to be eradicated. 

He considers the Imperial credits Greef Karga had tried to pay him for his last bounties. Where were those funds gaining traction again, after falling so swiftly out of favor? By whose hands did they reenter the public sphere? Credits spoke and its seekers listened, and nothing that passed ways with more weight than words was less than a whisper. 

It was an understanding, or worse--an agreement. _This again, and sooner than you'd think._

"Forget I asked," he says. His voice sounds stiff, and not just for its immersion from his helmet. 

What he means is, _I hope you don't remember._

The Mandalorian glances at the child. Its dark eyes are again locked on the patterned strip of stars belted across the highest point of the Mandslorian's viewfinder. 

The child does not yet know to fear the unknown, or Stormtroopers, or Mudhorns, or much anything else for that matter. It is not an ideal philosophy, but the Mandalorian finds he is not inclined to dissuade the child of it just yet. 

He pulls at the controls, tips up, driving further into them, and securing for the child an endless view of blackest space punctuated by white-hot discovery. 

The child coos appreciatively. The shiny token sphere from the Mandalorian's console falls from its grip, hits the floor with a metallic clang, and rolls backwards. 

It returns a moment later to the child's hands without the Mandalorian's aid. 

He does not see this happen; his gaze, too, is fixed on the stars.


End file.
